Defence Statement

I sent the following statement to a defence solicitor, accompanied by the following brief explanation:
Please find enclosed a defence statement - mentioned in a recent telephone conversation - consisting mostly of a couple of pages from a website [those headed Mabry Log and McCombies], one reason for the construction of which was to avoid the unpleasantness of going again and again through the many documents I have accumulated as a result of unfortunate relationships with neighbours.

Defence Statement of G. Madden

The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 prohibits harassment, Section 1 reading:
(1) A person must not pursue a course of conduct-
(a) which amounts to harassment of another, and
(b) which he knows or ought to know amounts to harassment of the other.
(2) For the purposes of this section, the person whose course of conduct is in question ought to know that it amounts to harassment of another if a reasonable person in possession of the same information would think the course of conduct amounted to harassment of the other.
(3) Subsection (1) does not apply to a course of conduct if the person who pursued it shows . . .
(c) that in the particular circumstances the pursuit of the course of conduct was reasonable.
My defence rests on the provisos in paragraph 2 and paragraph 3.
The Mabrys
The harassment started after the McCombies' friends the Mabrys moved in next door to me in 1998. My problems with the Mabrys are documented in correspondence with solicitors, in a case in Eastbourne County Court, and in correspondence with the police, but to avoid going yet again through the many documents that harassment by the Mabrys has occasioned, I will simply refer the reader to Appendix A, which is a printout from a page on my website which listed incidents that I associate with the Mabrys.
The McCombies
The McCombies moved to a property adjacent to mine in 1991, and their language and behaviour took their cue from those of their friends the Mabrys. My relations with the McCombies are documented in two civil court cases and in my correspondence with them, but for an account of that behaviour I will refer the reader to Appendix B, which again is a page from my website.
Charges
"Mr and Mrs McCombie . . . you have set up a website which insults them and have also sent letters to your neighbours and the council regarding them. You have been witnessed on occassions (sic) taking photos of the McCrombies (sic) property and have been seen several times late at night within the boundary of the McCombie's (sic) property."
• you have set up a website which insults them
I started developing a website earlier this year for several reasons:
(i) When I spoke to a police supervisor (Alan Snelling, I think) in 2003, he said that he could find no record of the various occasions on which I had called the police in 1999 because of harassment in the form of abusive language, unwanted mail and parcels, threats of violence, and the throwing of an eight-foot fence post which bruised my legs. I wished to make my own public record.
(ii) On one occasion last year when I drove down to the main road, Mabry waited for me to drive off and then followed uncomfortably close behind me, so that I thought that I might be pushed into the line of oncoming traffic when we reached the main road. I wished to leave a public record of events leading up to such an eventuality.
(iii) The hundreds of pages of documents and notes that I was accumulating because of difficulties with four neighbours who had claimed to own part of my property were becoming unwieldy, and I wanted to select, order, and record the most important of them, to make them more easily accessible without going through reams of material again and again.
(iv) Keeping stuff on the Internet is a useful way of keeping records off-site, in case of accidents like fire or hard disk failure.
(v) Problems with suppliers of unwanted goods were becoming intolerable, with letters and telephone calls from debt collection agencies and threatening letters from solicitors. I could simply send them the URLs of relevant pages in my website.
(vi) Making public the harassment I had been subjected to was my latest attempt at deterrence, Sussex police and Eastbourne County Court having been of no help whatever. My making known the presence of the website precipitated an organised assault on me initially, but since then the harassment has ceased, apart from the receipt of unwanted mail from companies who had been approached before I advertised the existence of the website.
• sent letters to your neighbours and the council regarding them
I sent one brief letter to the council about the erection of an FM aerial over my property, which does make one reference to Mrs McCombie: "I spoke to the householder as you suggested, but she was unsympathetic to my concerns". I sent one short letter to six neighbours, which was principally about Mabry and my website. The only mention of the McCombies occurs in a list of thirteen web pages, one of which is entitled McCombies.htm.
• You have been witnessed on occasions taking photos of the McCombies' property
The only photographs I have taken of the McCombies' property were taken with a view to their possible use as evidence in court. Many copies of the photographs taken are filed in Eastbourne County Court, so the suggestion in the wording of the charge that this was a covert activity is absurd.
• have been seen several times late at night within the boundary of the McCombie's property.
Simply preposterous as well as untrue.
G. Madden
23rd November 2004
Go to index